Military Review English Edition May-June 2016 | Page 52

2015 PUY CO DE 2015 PUY CO DE EST NT EST NT 2015 PUY CO DE EST NT The AFRICOM Queen Brian J. Dunn U nited States Africa Command (USAFRICOM) advances American interests in Africa by deploying elements of U.S. national power in a persistent manner. It seeks to prevent problems from growing to direct-threat proportions by enhancing the ability of states and regional or international organizations to promote security, stability, and prosperity. USAFRICOM (also known as AFRICOM) needs cost-effective and nontraditional naval platforms— auxiliary cruisers—to project U.S. Army and civilian interagency assets (supplemented by nongovernmental organizations, when appropriate) around the African continent for peacetime engagement and crisis response. In a June 2015 article for Signal Magazine, former U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis makes a case for increased use of the Navy’s afloat forward staging bases (AFSBs), which he says could fulfill the need for offshore bases to support missions in USAFRICOM. He suggests commercial options for creating more of this type of asset: “Given the uses for the concept, it is worth considering any commercial version that could be purchased for even less than the military’s AFSBs. While they would have somewhat less capability, their numbers would provide far more flexibility in distributing them among the regional combatant commanders.”1 Similarly, modularized auxiliary cruisers using civilian container ships taken into government service under contract, using primarily military crews and equipped with an array of weapon and support systems housed in commercial shipping containers, could function as mobile platforms for projecting and supporting Army military missions and civilian developmental and humanitarian initiatives around Africa. In a tight budget 50 environment, when the Navy prioritizes battle fleet assets for U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM), which has more sophisticated naval challenges, and to U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM), which is carrying out ongoing military campaigns, modularized auxiliary cruisers are the asset USAFRICOM needs. The Challenges of AFRICOM To cope with a full range of missions across a large, diverse continent, USAFRICOM sets forth a May-June 2016  MILITARY REVIEW